Thoughts Server

A journalling server of sorts that allows you to record various forms of data for yourself and then allow other users to then view that information.

The browser client is available in another repository.

Background

This effectively started out with me having various texts files on my computer that was me getting the thoughts out of my head and on to "paper". As it went on I started to record various other things like general mood on a scale of 1 - 10. At the request of others, they wanted to see some of this information but I did not have an easy way to do that and I was also looking for something to keep me entertained for a while. So as any sane person would do, I decided to build a web server that would house this information and allow them to access it and easily view things.

Features

Current features with plans to add more

• Daily entries that store text
• Custom fields that allow you to store integers, integer ranges, floats, float ranges, time, and time ranges along with a description of what the field is.
• Custom tags with colors that can be assigned to an entry
• Controlled user accounts so that only those you want to have access to the server do.
• Change account information such as username, full name, password, email, etc.
• Search entries over a given date range and show / hide fields as you wish
• Password recovery in case you forgot it

more features to come as the server progresses with some planned in the futre.

• Assign custom fields to a user at the request of another
• Include more medical related information that some could write down for another user
• Comments on another users information
• More information regarding a user if used in a medical environment

Technical Details

The main server is written in Rust and uses the Actix framework to handle the server capabilities. PostgreSQL is use for the database and uses Tokio Postgres for communication.

• Rust 1.65.0
• OpenSSL 1.1.1f
• PostgreSQL 13

Rust package versions can be found in the Cargo.toml

currently been building on Ubuntu Server 20.04 so no testing has been done on Windows or MacOS. Over versions of various packages and software may work but no testing has been done to determine those versions.

No official server version as I am unsure about what to set it currently.

Template Rendering

The server does limited template rendering. The server is not desiged for a more traditional web serving process of rendering a page from the server and sending it to the client. This could change in the future but not without some push back.

This is also a work in progress as well since most of the template rendering is currently expected to be done for emails if its enabled. The server will operate under the assumption that any html it will send is for an SPA (Single Page Application).

The clients are responsible for the UI not the server.

All files with the extension .hbs in the specified directory will be loaded into the template system for the server. Some files will be required as they are specifically called for by the server and are listed below:

page/
    index.hbs
email/
    verify_email.text.hbs
    verify_email.html.hbs

File Storage

TBD

Building

The server is capable of running without TLS if it is not needed (termination happening at a proxy and then forwarded to the server for example). It can have Rustls or OpenSSL enabled to allow for TLS. For OpenSSL to work the libraries and header files will be required to work. The docs for the rust package talks about how to download the headers and libraries.

As stated above this has currently only been built on Ubuntu Linux. Once you have the OpenSSL requirements run

# development
$ cargo build --workspace --bins
# release
$ cargo build --workspace --bins --release

The server should be ready to go by this point

Running

Command line arguments are currently limited. You will need to specify configuration files to setup the server. Specifying multiple config files and will be loaded in the order given with later files overriding earlier values. A configuration is as follows:

# if you want to include other config files without adding them
# to the command line then this will help to facilitate that
# order is depth first and will be loaded after the current file
include:
  - "./path/to/config.yaml"
  - "../path/to/other/config.yaml"
# any relative path will be resolved using the directory of
# the current config file
bind:
  # bind interfaces are keyed so that additional config files
  # could overwrite options if necessary
  ipv4:
    # valid ipv4 or ipv6 address for the system
    host: "0.0.0.0"
    port: 8080

    # each bind interface can have a specified ssl configuration
    ssl:
      key: "/path/to/key"
      cert: "/path/to/cert"

  ipv6:
    host: "::1"
    # if you want the bind interface to use the top level ssl
    # configuration
    ssl: true

# default port if a bind host does not have a port specified
port: 8080

# defaults to system max
threads: 16

# default values for the actix web framework being used
backlog: 2048
max_connections: 25000
max_connection_rate: 256

# security options to specify for the server
security:
  # session specific information
  session:
    # used in cookie sessions to restrict cookies to a
    # specific domain
    domain: "example.com"

  # used for signing cookies
  secret: "secret"

  # the signing algorithm used for signing cookies
  # current values are "blake3", "sha224", "sha256",
  # "sha384", "sha512". defaults to "blake3", this may
  # change in the future
  signing_algo: ""

db:
  username: "postgres"
  password: "password"
  database: "thoughts"
  port: 5432
  hostname: "localhost"

email:
  enabled: false
  from: "no_reply@example.com"
  username: "no_reply@example.com"
  password: "password"
  relay: "smtp.google.com"

# server information
# note: this might change
info:
  secure: true
  origin: "thoughts.example.com"
  name: "thoughts_server"

# template rendering
template:
  # you will need to specify the template directory
  # to locate handlebars template files
  directory: "./path/to/templates"
  # this will tell the render to always lookup the file
  # and reload it
  dev_mode: false

# file serving
file_serving:
  # a list of files that can be served. lookup will happen
  # here first then move to directories
  files:
    "/request/path/for/resource": "./path/to/file/resource"
    "/favicon.ico": "/it/is/here"
  # a list of directories to do lookups inside of for files.
  # currently no ordering is guarenteed and all files inside
  # the directories can be served
  directories:
    "/static/": "./static/directory"

# top level ssl information for secure server connections.
ssl:
  key: "../path/to/key"
  cert: "../path/to/cert"

Database

Currently only PostgreSQL is supported. If you run your own or have one running there is not easy way to create the database in that instance (work in progress). You can use Docker and Docker Compose to start one from the project root which will create and setup the database for use by the server.

# should create and start the dabase
$ docker-compose up
# start the database if it was already created
$ docker-compose start

Contributions

No idea. If you are interested in helping out with this then sweet!

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS FOR PRODUCTION PURPOSES YET